In many medical procedures, various physiological conditions present within a body cavity need to be monitored. These physiological conditions are typically physical in nature—such as pressure, temperature, rate-of-fluid flow, and provide the physician or medical technician with critical information as to the status of a patient's condition.
One device that is widely used to monitor conditions is the blood pressure sensor. A blood pressure sensor senses the magnitude of a patient's blood pressure, and converts it into a representative electrical signal that is transmitted to the exterior of the patient. For most applications it is also required that the sensor is electrically energized.
Some means of signal and energy transmission is thus required, and most commonly extremely thin electrical cables are provided inside a guide wire, which itself preferably is provided in the form of a tube, which often has an outer diameter in the order of 0.35 mm, and oftentimes is made of steel. In order to increase the bending strength of the tubular guide wire, a core wire is positioned inside the tube. The mentioned electrical leads are positioned in the space between the inner lumen wall and the core wire.
In a guide wire mounted sensor, the signals from the sensor, arranged at the distal end of the guide wire, are lead through the electrical leads to a male connector at the proximal end of the guide wire. In use, the male connector is connected to a corresponding female connector and the signals from the pressure sensor are transferred to an interface, which converts the signals and presents them in a desired form for an operator.
A conventional male connector basically comprises a core wire, a plurality of conductors, a plurality of conductive members, and insulating material therebetween. When the male connector is connected to the female connector, the conductive members transfer the signals from the conductors of the male connector to similar conductive members inside the female connector. Several different designs of such male connectors are known in the prior art, and examples of such male connectors are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,196,980 B1, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,908,442 B2, which both are assigned to the same assignee as in the present application.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,090,052 A, also assigned to the same assignee as in the present application, a male connector comprising a sheet of thin flexible material, on which the electrical leads are provided, is disclosed. The sheet has the general shape of the letter L, or a flagstaff with a hoisted flag.
The manufacturing of such thin flexible sheet for male connectors and the mounting of the thin flexible sheets on the male connector are time-consuming and thus an expensive procedure, and the object of the present invention is to achieve an improved male connector that is easier to manufacture and assemble than presently used male connectors which render the overall manufacturing cost less expensive.